Jenna Ladd | May 11, 2017

At the meeting, the end of the United States two-year chairmanship of the council will be marked with a final statement summarizing U.S. accomplishments as chair. Officials from Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden have not yet signed off on the statement because they say that the Trump administration deemphasizes climate change and the Paris climate accord in the document. The language of the document must be approved by all parties prior to its presentation for signing.

The other member countries say that President Trump has reversed the commitment that President Obama made to climate issues when the U.S. became chair in 2015. Along with Russia, the current administration has suggested opening up the Arctic to more drilling. The White House is also considering pulling out of the Paris climate pact, which was signed by over 200 nations in 2015.

Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden recently made a joint statement pledging to take the lead on climate change and energy policy and firmly backing the Paris accord. At the ministerial meeting’s end, Finland will become head of council.

Although the current administration has taken decisive steps to dismantle climate change policy, David Balton, the State Department’s assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, said, “The U.S. will remain engaged in the work the Arctic Council does on climate change throughout. I am very confident there will be no change in that regard.”

Jenna Ladd | December 14, 2016

Scientists say that the Arctic experienced its warmest year ever recorded, and temperatures in the region are rising at “astonishing” rates. Jeremy Mathis is director of NOAA’s Arctic research program, he said, “Rarely have we seen the Arctic show a clearer, stronger or more pronounced signal of persistent warming and its cascading effects on the environment than this year.”

Scientists explained that warming which used to only have an effect in the summer months is now affecting the Arctic year-round. Mathis added, “The Arctic as a whole is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the planet.”

The report said that the warming of the Arctic can be explained by long-term increases in carbon dioxide emissions and air temperatures as well as natural seasonal and regional variability. These effects are compounded by the feedback loops in the Arctic climate system. Before human-induced climate change, the Arctic region remained cool because large areas of ice and snow reflected much of the sun’s rays back into space. Now that large areas of the ice and snow are melting away, the sun’s rays absorb into the dark land masses and ocean water, causing temperatures to rise more quickly.

Mathis said, “What happens in the Arctic, doesn’t stay in the Arctic.”

He explained that warm temperatures in the Arctic could be influencing jet stream patterns in the Northern hemisphere, potentially causing extreme weather in the United States.

Rafe Pomerance, a member of the Polar Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences, was not involved with the report card. He said,“The 2016 Arctic Report Card further documents the unraveling of the Arctic and the crumbling of the pillars of the global climate system that the Arctic maintains.”

Jenna Ladd | December 13, 2016

Andrey Petrov, director of the University of Northern Iowa Arctic Center, led a study of the largest reindeer herd in the world, located on the Taimyr Peninsula in the northernmost tip of Russia. Petrov’s work shows that the herd’s population has dropped from 1 million reindeer in 2000 to about 600,000 today. Scientists say rising temperatures in the region may be the cause.

Petrov said, “Climate change is at least one of the variables.” He added, “We know in the last two decades that we have had an increase in temperatures of about 1.5C overall. And that definitely impacts migration patterns.” During his presentation at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco on Monday, Petrov explained that the longer distance the animals have to travel in order to find cold weather is increasing calf mortality. When the reindeer have to travel further and to higher elevations in the winter, it is also more difficult to find land bearing food in the summer months. Petrov also explained that the region’s rivers are growing wider as ice in the area melts, causing more deaths as the herd attempts to swim across bodies of water.

“Reindeer are tremendously important for biodiversity – they are part of the Arctic food chain and without them other species would be in trouble,” he said. Petrov added, “Thousands and thousands of people rely on wild reindeer; it is the basis of their subsistence economy. So it’s about human sustainability too.”

Wild reindeer are also shrinking in size. Scottish and Norwegian researchers recently released a study which found that the average weight of reindeer on Svalbard, a chain of islands north of Norway, has fallen from 121 lb. in the 1990’s to 106 lb. today. Professor Steve Albon, an ecologist at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, said, “Warmer summers are great for reindeer but winters are getting increasingly tough.” The researchers explained that less snowfall during warmer winters means that the reindeer have to traverse sheets of ice, making it harder for the animals to reach food sources.

In contrast to the Tamiyr population, the Svalbard herd is growing in size.”So far we have more but smaller reindeer,” Albon said. He added that the growing population means competition for food has become more intense.

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — The National Science Foundation awarded a grant of $750,000 to the University of Northern Iowa for a project run by Andrey Petrov, assistant professor in the Department of Geography. The project is named RCN-SEES: Arctic-FROST: Arctic Frontiers of Sustainability: Resources, Societies, Environments and Development in the Changing North.

The project is based at the Arctic Social and Environmental Systems Research (ARCSES) Laboratory in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. As the leader of the project, UNI will serve as the national focal center of sustainability science research in the Arctic for the next five years.

Arctic-FROST builds an international collaborative network that teams together environmental and social scientists, local educators and community members to enable and mobilize research on sustainable Arctic development. The research is specifically aimed at improving health, human development and the well-being of Arctic communities.

Thawing permafrost in the Arctic is predicted to release huge amounts of methane that scientists say could impact the economy. Researchers roughly estimate the cost at $60 trillion.

The impacts are more likely to be felt in developing countries.

“We are looking at a big effect,” said Professor Peter Wadhams from the University of Cambridge, “a possibly catastrophic effect on global climate that’s a consequence of this extremely fast sea ice retreat that’s been happening in recent years.”